E-Portfolio

Hello!  My name is Christina Brown.  Welcome to my E-portfolio.  I’ve created this portfolio to keep track of my academic progress at Penn State University.  I am a psychology major and plan on graduating in 2014. 

When I started college, I only had a vague idea of which direction I wanted to take my education.  I have always struggled with finding a single topic or area of study that particularly interested me.  I never found history or english too interesting, but they were bearable.  Even the subjects that I was more intrigued by such as psychology and math never sparked a passion.  I still have yet to find that subject that I am truly inspired by, but my college career thus far has started to guide me.

Through middle school and high school I was involved in a research study in the field of neuroscience led by one of my good friend’s mother.  Since then, I have been exploring the idea of possibly doing the same type of research after graduating college.  I have taken quite a few science classes that would be required to be involved in this research, and I’ve realized that they are quite difficult.  This realization has only boosted my attraction to this field of study. 

A couple of classes that I’ve taken thus far have not required my effort on my end to receive a decent grade in the class, but I also never got much out of them.  Although this is relaxing, it is not fulfilling.  Looking back on the courses that I’ve completed, I’ve found that I am most fond of the ones that required work, but also taught me the most.  I find that it is better to challenge myself than to breeze through classes because the more difficult classes will ultimately make me more competent.  I have already learned new ways to study, manage my time, and work that I am confident will continue to help me in my future endeavors.  Even though a career in neuroscience may be difficult, I am confident that it will be well worth the effort in the long run.

Christina Brown's E-Portfolio

Rhetoric of Abortion

DISCLAIMER: I am not writing this post to debate the actual issue of abortion, I simply aim to discuss the rhetoric surrounding it.

I'll start with a bit of background information.  I am a very strong supporter of Planned Parenthood; not because of anything regarding their abortions, but because of everything else they do.  If you are unaware, they provide basic health care such as birth control, STD screenings, and cancer screenings, among many other things to men and women who may otherwise not be able to afford such things.  It has recently come under attack by republicans who want to cut all federal funding to it.  This seriously upsets me, because no federal funding goes to pay for abortions for women, and they provide so many other services.  Anyway, I have been trying to keep up with this issue, and have been receiving emails from Planned Parenthood. 

Yesterday I got an email urging me to go to a rally, call my congress member, etc.  This email would have gone unnoticed aside from the fact that it was littered with the term "anti-choice." 

The terms originally used to describe the two sides of the argument were "pro-choice" for people who thought abortions should remain legal, and "pro-life" for those who wanted it to be illegal.  I personally don't find either of those two terms offensive towards either side.  I have a cousin who is extremely religious, and extremely pro-life, who constantly posts things on Facebook regarding abortion.  I've taken the time to look at some of the websites, and every one that I saw talked about the people that are "pro-abortion."  Granted most of these websites were fairly extreme, but I was shocked that they would use that term, to say the least.  I'm pretty positive that there is no one out there that is pro-abortion.  It's not that pro-choice people want women to have abortions, just that they should be able to make that decision for themselves, as the title implies.  The term "pro-abortion" completely skews the ideals that pro-choicers fight for.  So up until yesterday, I had never seen any of these behaviors from the pro-choice side, and I must say, I was thoroughly disgusted when I did.  Just as "pro-abortion" tries to make pro-life sound bad, "anti-choice" makes it sound like they are trying to take away our freedom.  

I don't care how strongly people feel about a subject; stooping to name calling is never the solution.  Both sides have legitimate arguments that can be made, so there is no reason for them to do this.  Both sides seem petty and immature.  It may work to further persuade people that are already on their side, but I cannot imagine it helps them get any moderate people to agree with them.

April Fool's Day!

Happy April Fool's Day, everyone!  While scrounging my brain for something to write about this week, I thought about this lovely "holiday" that is April Fool's Day.  I've found that people either take it very seriously, or don't even realize what day it is.  Then I started thinking about the rhetoric of pretty much everything for the day.  I was looking around at news websites such as Time.com and cnn.com, and found myself wondering if all of the articles were true, despite the fact that these are very reputable news sources. 
I found myself judging whether or not they were real by the language used and the content of the articles.  I didn’t actually end up finding any joke articles, probably because I was on all credible news sources.  But earlier in class I overheard two girls discussing the latest edition of the Phollegian, the Penn State joke newspaper, and was thinking about how we decide whether or not something is true.  The Phollegian is an extreme example because the topics they write about are extremely outlandish, and obviously not true.  Despite this, the articles are still written professionally and in the same fashion as a legitimate newspaper.  So if you wanted to write a joke article and make it convincing, the key would be to write it in the same format.
I also overheard a lunch lady telling a couple of girls that the commons ran out of grilled cheese, which was also just a joke.  Pulling something like that off in person is much more difficult than writing it because it requires you to control more than just your choice of words.  Aside from just having a convincing story, you have to control your body language, facial expressions, and vocal tones.  This is often difficult to do because you may not even realize that you’re doing something that’s giving away your lie.
Moral of the story; if you want to play a prank on someone, make everything seem as normal as possible for as long as possible.

5 Hour Energy

So I was just watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and the 5 Hour Energy commercial came on.  There are a lot of different ones, but this one always bothers me:

Just kidding, I can't find it on Youtube.

Anyway, this particular commercial that I'm talking about starts out talking about all of the things that we do in the morning to get our coffee such as "fuss with it, carry it, make it, wait for it," etc.  During this they show people spilling coffee on themselves, waiting in the longest lines you've ever seen, and just being extremely over dramatic.  Then it goes on to tell you how fast and easy 5 Hour Energy is.  They show a guy drink it, look at his watch, and sit down to read a newspaper, or something along those lines.

Now clearly the rhetoric is trying to convince you that coffee is very difficult to have in the morning, and 5 Hour Energy is the obvious solution to this hassle. 

That would be all fine and dandy, but it just doesn’t work in the commercial.  At least not for me.  I’m not a big coffee drinker, but occasionally I’ll make myself a cup in the morning if I’m feeling extra tired, and sometimes I’ll stop at a coffee shop and pick one up, so I know that it’s really not that difficult.  Plus their target audience in this commercial is people that are regular coffee drinkers, and I assume that they all have their coffee routine down pretty well (I assume this because even with how rarely I drink it, I can do it quite efficiently).  If my assumption is correct, this commercial is essentially trying to fix a problem does not exist.
I’ve seen other 5 Hour Energy commercials that focus on the fact that it gets you over “that 2 o’clock feeling,” and that there’s no crash, etc.  Those all make sense, and work to fix something that is a problem that many people have.  This commercial in particular just seems to dramatize something that I’ve never heard people complain about, and ends up seeming comical rather than persuasive. 

Movie Posters

This week I'm going to talk about the rhetoric of a couple of movie posters, because I'm in a movie mood right now.

The first one is the poster for Jackass: The Movie, since I'm also in a Jackass mood!

First of all, what a fun picture!  A bunch of guys crammed into an over-sized shopping cart racing down a hill being followed by a huge explosion.  This poster is basically promising fans that the movie will be a bigger, better version of the television show.  The shopping cart does this because anyone who watched the show knows they often ride around in them.  In the poster, they are literally in a bigger and better shopping cart than a real one.  Next, the explosion is huge, and bigger than anything they would have been able to do with the show, so once again, they are making promises of new and more exciting stunts.  It also has the recognizable "jackass" in all white written at the bottom, but written in red over top it says "with stuff you'd never see on t.v." once again convincing the fans that if you like the television show, you'll love the movie.  I think this was important for the movie because I'm sure there were doubt that the show wouldn't work out in a movie format because it's comprised of short clips, which you may not expect to work for 90 minutes or so.  Overall, I think this poster does a great job in what it wants to express about the movie; it is just like the show, but with more exciting and crazy stunts, which is just what fans would want to see.

Poster #2: Valentine's Day

I haven't seen this movie, because I'm not particularly a fan of romantic comedies, but that's beside the point.  The main focus of this movie poster is the celebrities.  You look at it and see a heart filled with faces, so immediately the target audience (mainly women) is drawn in.  Upon further inspection, we see the words "From the director of Pretty Woman comes a day in the life of love."  The entire poster is focused on boosting the recognizable names.  Pretty Woman is an extremely well known romantic movie, so the poster tries to promise that this movie will be just as good as that one because it's the same director!  Then you look closer at the faces in the heart and realize that they are all extremely well-known and young faces in Hollywood.  You would be hard pressed to find someone that would not recognize at least one face in that group.  By doing this the poster is basically saying "Look at all the famous people we got to be in our movie, it MUST be good!"  All you really know about the movie is that it is about love, and it has a whole bunch of famous actors and actresses, but I think it works to get the target audience interested in the movie.

These movie posters are extremely different from one another, but both work for their different purposes.  The Jackass poster promises its fans that there will be more action than there was in the t.v. show, and therefore way more fun.  The Valentine's Day poster was released on Valentine's day, so many people were already looking for a romantic movie, and this poster claims to be the best by promoting all of the famous stars that it has. 

Ikea "Save The Lamp" Ad

So while perusing the internet for this week's ad to analyze, I came upon this gem from Ikea:

This is quite possibly my new favorite commercial ever... Well, probably second after the Darth Vader commercial.  Anyway, this commercial first manipulates our emotions by personifying the lamp then bringing us back to reality with humor.

The majority of the commercial is spent making the viewer connect to this old lamp.  We first see this lamp carried out of a house and put next to the trash.  The shot is very dark, it's windy out, and there's slow, sad music playing.  The commercial uses commonplaces such as windy, rainy nights to draw on our emotions.  We've all seen a movie scene where a character is left by themselves in the rain and forced to fend for themselves.  They also had the woman literally put the lamp out in the trash, which we easily equate to being rejected or broken up with by a partner.  They even show the woman in her house enjoying herself with her new lamp while the old one sits in the rain.  We relate these images and situations to being sad, but only because we connect them to our emotions and interactions with other people.  We imagine ourselves being thrown away, and left for another, better version of ourselves.  Because of this, we attach our own emotions to this lamp, and feel bad for it

Then a man walks into the shot, and suddenly the music stops.  Then he says "Many of you feel bad for this lamp.  That is because you're crazy!  It has no feelings, and the new one is much better."  Then the commercial ends with Ikea's logo and "unboring" written underneath it.  The first time I watched this I was shocked.  That was the last thing I expected to happen, and it really caught my attention, I had to watch the end again, and that is exactly what Ikea was going for.  In a couple of seconds they bring us back to reality and remind us that no matter how many personal emotions you attach to a lamp, or any other inanimate object for that matter, it is still simply an object.  It doesn't have feelings, and leaving it out in the rain because you got a new one will not make it sad.  This attempts to persuade us to go out and buy Ikea's new "unboring" items, because they're much better, and getting rid of your old things won't hurt anyone.

I think this commercial is extremely effective rhetorically because not only does it involve comedy to make its point, but there is a strong logos appeal in the fact that no matter how you perceive a lamp, it's still just a lamp.

Darth Vader Volkswagen Commercial

So a little bit before the Superbowl this year I discovered the best commercial I've ever seen.  Just watch it and I'm sure you'll understand why:

I think it works so well because aside from being completely adorable, the storyline of the commercial is very familiar to the general audience.  First of all they used the image of Darth Vader, one of the most iconic characters of pop culture.  Even people who haven't seen Star Wars are likely to recognize this symbol as the dominating leader of "the dark side."  In the movies he is played by David Prowse, a body builder who towers over the other characters in the movie.  In the commercial they do just the opposite and have a little boy in the costume.  This is surprising, and catches your attention.  It's entertaining to watch this little boy parade around attempting to be a character that is by nature very large and dominating.

Little kids always have that one character that they always dressed up as and wanted to be like, whether it was Darth Vader, Superman, Cinderella, Tinkerbell, so this is very easy to relate to.  It brings back fond memories of your childhood, or of watching your kids grow up.  By reminding you of these good times you are likely to associate the car with the good emotions you are feeling.

The last really important part is that the commercial basically says that if you buy this car, you can achieve your goals.  Throughout the majority of the ad, the boy is running around his house trying to "use the force," but continuously fails.  When his dad drives home, it looks like he is going to make one last attempt at the force, and it works! (or so he thinks)  Either way, he finally achieved his goal, and it makes it seem like it will help you achieve your goals also.  It also shows that both the parents and the kid are happy at the end, also reminding you that if you buy this car, you'll be happy!

Overall I think this commercial is great.  I mostly love it just because it's one of the cutest things I've ever seen, and that little boy is an amazing actor even without seeing his face.  But then after looking deeper into it, it's obvious that there's a lot more going on to remind you of success and happiness.